Find the English equivalents of Russian terminology and translate the sentences.

1. The accumulation of dust in railway tunnels can cause the worse conditions for passengers trying to escape in an (аварийная ситуация).

2. Coarse dust, predominantly (песок), accumulates on the track, while fine dust composed of alumina, graphite and silicate sticks to the tunnel walls and (своды) because of a strong electrostatic bond.

3. The leaves that fall during autumn are blown into the railway tunnels by strong winds. They are compressed by passing trains (колеса) into a thin layer on the railhead and some sections of railway are brought to a halt.

4. If there is a heavy (накопление снега и льда), mechanical means should be used to remove as much as possible before a deicing chemical is applied.

5. Testing is being done in the tunnel when it is not in use. When a track (повреждение) is identified, time is of the essence. A track maintenance gang makes decisions and acts fast.

6. During the construction of a tunnel, fire safety, dust separation and cooling are important aspects to meet modern standards for health and (безопасность) at work.

7. (Пыль) is typically deposited by mechanical filters or water sprays where solid particles adhere to water droplets.

8. Fire and (дым) are usually dealt with by a ventilation system. If no escape path is nearby, fire suppression systems and shelter areas are required additionally.

Work in pairs. Make up your own dialogues. Student A will be the engineer, working with a team of specialists, who are responsible for after-inspection repair in the tunnel. Student B will represent the designer who consults the workers. They are discussing the challenges the tunnel faces. Use the following word combinations for your questions and phrases for possible answers.

Could you; I’d like to know; Can you tell me; What about; We need; We really must; We ought to; We can manage it; It isn’t necessary; We don’t have to; We can do without; It was good planning; It was more than just laying the track; We didn’t change the structural look of it, but it looks better because we upgraded all of the lighting systems; The lighting is a big deal; When you’re talking about a three-mile tube underground, lighting becomes very important; There was some water damage that had crept in; This tunnel is the economic engine of the region, and now it’s becoming more accessible to traffic.

Unit 23

COLLAPSE OF RAILWAY AND MOTORWAY ENGINEERING STRUCTURES

Read the text, try to guess the meaning of the words you do not know, and then analyze how many meanings you can guess correctly or nearly correctly.

Throughout the world, millions of people travel each day with perfect confidence in transport reliability. Bridges and tunnels play an important role within the transport infrastructure network. Risks have increased in recent years with the ageing of Railway and Motorway ES. Most bridges and tunnels do not meet traffic demands, which have significantly changed since their initial opening.

All serious bridge and tunnel accidents must be given a lot of attention. Professional engineers must provide evaluations of bridge management practices on numerous motor and railways and identify structures with extremely poor structural conditions or structural deficiencies. They must thoroughly review the train accident data and adopt stringent safety assurance protocols to prevent deterioration or degradation of railway bridge conditions in order to reduce the risk of structural failures and casualties. A review of motor and train accident/incident reports revealed that most of them were caused by the structural failure of motorway and railway bridges, and that several small railways have no bridge inspection at all.

The main reasons causing the failures and collapses of Railway and Motorway ES can be divided into three groups: natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and avalanches); the shortcomings in engineering and technical calculations of the structures; negligence, ignorance and violation of construction and maintenance recommendations.

Earthquakes cause a number of Railway and Motorway ES failures and collapses. More than 100,000 quakes occur each year, and no place on the Earth is safe from tectonic pressure. Sudden, abrupt and violent shifts in the Earth’s crust result in vertical and horizontal displacements, which bring the piers into an inclined position or crush them and throw off the spans. But it is worth noting that during the most reported quakes the Railway and Motorway ES have not been damaged as much as other civil engineering structures. An earthquake crushed about 85% of dwellings in Tokyo on September 1, 1923 but only 337 out of 1028 bridges went out of service. Moreover, the Great Tashkent Earthquake in 1966 did not raze any Railway and Motorway Engineering Structures.

The impact of ice is also dangerous for bridgeworks. In 1938-ice accumulation on the Niagara River cut the arch span abutment. The 256 m span collapsed under the weight of ice build-up which accumulated during 36 hours and reached more than 27 m at a distance of 120 m., and nothing was done to blast it away. The bridge had been in service for forty years and the piles of ice twice reached the threatening danger point during that period. One more reason for bridge collapse is the scour of pier foundations. In 1881-the current speed in the Russian River Uvod increased due to channel constriction. It produced a 5 m hollow in the soft riverbed, the pier foundations lost stability, and the bridge collapsed. The next challenge for bridges is their construction and maintenance in harsh freezing conditions. The superficial knowledge of metal and its structural element behaviour resulted in a bridge collapse in Belgium in 1938. When the air temperature dropped abruptly to subzero some of the metal arch elements broke without any additional loads. The high carbon content of steel causes this metal condition, known as cold brittleness.

Each railway should maintain an accurate inventory of their bridges. Railways need to conduct detailed comprehensive bridge inspections at least once per year, and competent engineers must determine the capacity of each bridge. Bridge inspection information should be accurately recorded in detail, and describe potential problems.

Tunnels also play an important role within the transport infrastructure network. Safety Standards guarantee a high level of safety for the users of tunnels. Nevertheless, most long-distance rock tunnels have encountered problems with extremely large water inflow, which can cause tunnel collapse. Owing to the enclosed space of a tunnel, accidents, particularly those involving fires and collisions, can have dramatic consequences leading to the disruption of the transport system and severe disturbances in the economy, of a whole region. Fires can have the most serious consequences that involve injuries, fatalities or extensive material damage. The main dangers are highly toxic accumulations of gas and smoke.

The tunnel fire accidents with the highest number of fatalities all occurred in tunnels with narrow profiles and with a single-track bore on a single-track line. During the period from 1940 to 2001, 26 serious rail and metro accidents in different tunnels have been identified. Among those serious accidents, is the fire in the Baku metro in 1995. There is reason to believe that the narrow cross-sectional area of this tunnel (28m²) contributed significantly to the severity of the accident because most of the people who died did not manage to get out of the train, or got out too late. A larger cross-sectional area may have allowed more time for evacuation before the concentration of heat and smoke became unbearable.

Railway convention throughout the world has always been that a train on fire, in a tunnel, must first be driven out of it. Therefore, it is very important to ensure that the train can be evacuated at the first confirmation of a fire, or to allow the safe escape of passengers, and the installation of fire suppression stations in each running tunnel. In the Euro tunnel fire, the train stopped next to an emergency exit but the concentration of smoke and fire gases, following the train, made it difficult to use the exit, until a bubble of fresh air was injected into the tunnel through the emergency exit. The passengers escaped into the parallel tunnel.

Security is the new watchword, in the world, which makes the transport system authorities more vigilant because dramatic terrorist attacks have caused a large number of fatalities. An explosion in the Moscow Metro killed four passengers and injured twelve others in 1996, and in 2004, a suicide bomb attack destroyed a metro train, during the morning rush hour, resulting in 40 fatalities and about 140 casualties. Therefore, the transport system must increase its preparedness, detect potential threats and take the correct immediate action. Public transport staff must be well trained to prevent dangerous situations and handle incidents once they have happened. Video-surveillance systems, allowing recording, should be installed to observe tunnels, turnout tracks at the endings of the lines etc. Video images have to be constantly analysed to detect abnormal situations. The alert systems, based on the video recording, should also work automatically.

The designers of R&M ES must plan them with the aim of reducing the opportunity for crimes to be committed. The design features should include the absence of dark corners. Emergency intercoms, call buttons and alarms must be clearly marked. Closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) should be situated at the end of each platform. Much has to be done now because the security of railway and motorway engineering structures is Job Number One every day.

Exercises:

Find the words or phrases that mean natural disasters, causalities, safety and security actions. Using dictionaries, find more words and terminology and word combinations with the same meaning. Exchange them with your partner.

Complete and translate the following sentences.

1. The 9 m span made of (чугунная балка) failed under the train moving at the speed 65 km/h. It happened in Great Britain in 1883. The accident was caused by the (динамическая нагрузка) which the girder could not resist because of cast iron brittleness and a lot of (раковины) within it.

2. The worldwide known bridge (разрушение) took place on November 7^th, 1940 on the Tacoma River, in the USA. The (трехпролетный висячий мост) had been designed structurally safe for a wind pressure of 50 pounds per square foot. In spite of the fact, that the wind force being not very strong (40 mph), its (главный) 874 m span collapsed because of the amplification of the vertical and torsion vibrations created by resonance in a mild gale. Their combination produced (аэродинамическая неустойчивость).

3. One of the most vivid examples of negligence and carelessness causing bridge collapse was the construction of the Quebec Bridge in Canada. Its span made of (металлические фермы) was 548 m long. While being erected, the span fell into the water because of an engineering fault.

4. In 1875-several compressed elements of the bridge truss on the Kevda River in Russia lost their (устойчивость). The reason was in (выпучивание элементов при их сжатии) but this phenomenon had not been properly studied.

5. The Northern-Muya Tunnel collapse, at the BAM mainline, was caused by the (ось тоннеля) which went through the rock fault. It was a huge cone-shaped hollow of 600 m in diameter, filled with mud. The rock pressure broke down (временная крепь), and water and mud gushed into the tunnel.

6. To control (движение транспорта) in the regular and incident mode, the tunnel is equipped with modern signaling system.

Ask your teacher as many questions about ES failures as you can. Then working in pairs, practice the questions below and give the proper answers to them. Support your opinion by using vivid examples. Make up your own questions and help your partner to answer them if he/she is hesitant.

1. What factors may increase the risk of failures and collapses of R&M ES?

2. What disasters are most dangerous for Railway and Motorway ES?

3. What threatens bridges in the case of scours and harsh winter conditions?

4. What is the railway industry safety policy aimed at?

5. Do the railways conduct comprehensive bridge inspections?

6. What accidents are typical in tunnels?

7. What equipment can prevent the failure and collapse of R&M ES?

8. The Tacoma Bridge failed because of its extreme flexibility resulting from aerodynamic instability, didn’t it?

9. What stopped the construction of the Northern-Muya Tunnel?

Unit 24

RUSSIAN BRIDGE AND TUNNEL ENGINEERING AT THE TURN OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Read the text.

At the turn of the new millennium Russia has displayed impressive achievements in bridge engineering and architectural merit of bridge structures. The road bridge across the Ob River in Sourgut was put into operation on September 16, 2000 and established a record among single tower cable-stayed structures with the total span length of 408 m. Its design and construction allowed domestic bridge building to develop new methods of theoretical calculation, experimental investigation, fabrication methods, and erection of complicated structures in the severe climatic conditions of the northern areas.

It is worth noting that the Sourgut Bridge has helped Russian scientists and engineers to overcome the psychological barrier which prevented them from using state-of-art foreign technology and achievements in bridge engineering. Having built this bridge, Russian engineers proved their ability to meet the challenges of bridge engineering under modern economic conditions.

The architectural merits of the Sourgut Bridge are truly captivating. The stiffening girder, coated in orange paint, is 576 m long, and its minimum height of 3.6 m is equal to 1/160 of its length. The wind fairings resemble spaceships, and the towers look like two orange arrows daringly raised up to 149 m in height. The tower cross bracing produces an impression of a lace-like net, and the bridge front bracing, involving the legs with a constant width of 3.6 m, increases the beauty, that is in the eye of the beholder. A practically invisible web of stay cables, which are put together almost in a bundle at the anchor pier, connect the tower with the stiffening girder under different angles (from 20° to 70°). During the evening the bridge is effectively illuminated.

The road bridge, in the city of Khanty-Mansyisk, over the Irtysh River, built in 2004, is a unique structure. Firstly, a suspension bridge was considered but finally a combined metal structure, in the spirit of the XXI century was adopted. The half-through arch span is followed by a continuous beam and the trussed girder with top and bottom polygonal chords. Citizens call the bridge by the endearing nickname of “A sleeping baby dinosaur”. The main five-span structure is 231 m long which is the third longest in Russia after the cable-stayed bridges in Sourgut and St. Petersburg.

The cable-stayed road bridge in St Petersburg, built in 2004, is the first unobstructed passage over the Neva River. It provides unobstructed sailing for ships of the “river-sea” class, up to 30 m high. The total span length is 2,570 m and the bridge is the most complicated section of the ring road around St. Petersburg. The three-span cable-stayed structure has a metal stiffening girder, and its main span is 382 m long thus it is the second longest in Russia after the record span length (408 m) of the Sourgut Bridge. This multi-cable-stayed system was constructed by cantilever erection and simultaneous cable stays fastening both towers which are 125 m high above the river bed. The bridge floor is 19 m wide and has four expressway lanes. During the celebratory event, when the bridge came into operation, the President of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin said “This bridge has proved that the best traditions of our engineering school are alive, they are steadily developing in accordance with the highest standards and using the state-of-art technologies”.

The unique bridge which crosses the Moskva River at an angle of just under 16° (almost along the river) was constructed at the Silvery Pine Forest within the city of Moscow in 2007. The design was commissioned by the Science Production Association - ‘Bridge Builder’. The structure represents a system whereby a cable-stayed structure is combined with a beam, and the tower is built as a trussed arch. Fan shaped arrangements of cable-stays produce the spatial curvilinear surfaces. Such cable stay layouts provide the required vertical, horizontal and torsion stiffness for the structure. A spirally twisted system of cable-stayed suspenders produces a specific visual effect – “the falling thread-like web which emerges from the rainbow suspended over the river”. During the evening hours the bridge looks mysterious because of the great arch height. The illumination gradually weakens which turns into dimmed lighting, at the upper arch sections, and creates a magic visual illusion of the unearthly structure vanishing from sight. This visual sensation deepens due to the unusual shape and lightning of the coffee bar suspended at a height of 100 m above the ground. It is beyond all doubt that the Silvery Pine Forest Bridge will prove to be a tourist attraction in the Russian capital.

A unique cable-stayed bridge is to be built in the city of Vladivostok by 2012. This double-towered structure will connect the city with the Russian Island by a record span of 1,104 m. The general contractor – the building company “Bridge” – is headed by V.V. Kostylev who graduated from the “Bridges and Tunnels” Faculty of Siberian State University of Railway Engineering in 1975.

The Baikal-Amur Trunk Line (1974-2001) has greatly influenced Russian tunnel engineering and updated technical knowledge. Many graduates of the “Bridges and Tunnels” Faculty took active part in construction of railway tunnels in this trunk line. Four cape intersecting tunnels with their total length of 5.4 km were built in the western district of the BAM. One of longest tunnels in Russia, the Baikal Tunnel which length is 6.7 km, was also constructed in the western district of the Baikal-Amur Trunk Line. Another three long tunnels were built in the BAM Central District.

The length of the Kodarsky tunnel is 2.0 km long, the next is the Dousse-Alinskyi Tunnel which is 1.8 km in length, and the length of Nagornyi (Upland) Tunnel is 1.3 km.

But the Northern-Muya Tunnel is the longest and most complicated railway tunnel in Russia. Its length is 15,343 m however if you include all the underground openings and transporting drainage raises and shafts it increases the length by almost 100 km. The tunnel laying depth ranges from 300 m to 1,800 m, and its construction lasted for 27 years under severe conditions. The sharp continental climate in this region is characterized with temperature swings from +35°С to -56°С, and the estimated seismic activity is equal to a 9-point earthquake on the Richter scale. The completion of this tunnel construction was a notable engineering feat, and the scheduled opening was on December 21, 2001.

The horse-shaped cross section of the main railway tunnel is 60 m², and has a monolithic-reinforced concrete lining. The diameter of the circular shaped tunnel portals and tunnel sections, at the fracture zones, is about 9.5 m. These sections are supported with a cast lining. The cross-section of the transporting drainage raise, which lays parallel to the tunnel, at a distance of 15 m, is 18 m². It has a monolithic or precast concrete lining.

The tunnel is driven through the massif with tectonic deformation and fracture zones up to 900 m wide, and with layers of thermal water with temperature ranges from +2°C to +45°C. The tunnelling faced such challenges as huge amounts of spontaneous water and sand inrushes at Angarakanskaya Depression. The unsound geological conditions were such that water inflow gushed in jets that included fine-dispersed rock debris material which volume exceeded hundreds of cubic metres per hour, under hydrostatic pressure of up to 5 MPa.

While constructing the Northern-Muya Tunnel the scientists, designers and tunnel builders implemented, through consensus, many newly-developed engineering achievements: combining of horizontal and vertical dewatering wells at a depth of 300 m; application of chemical grouting in the tunnel face at a great length; putting into practice the pipe barrier method to overcome fracture zones.

Several original vehicular tunnels were built in Russia after 2000, in accordance with the plan for the development of southern Russia. The Matsesta tunnel (1.35 km) and the Red Glade Tunnel (2.45 km) were built in the immediate vicinity of Sochi, and two new tunnels between the city of Adler and Red Glade District were built to enhance the road network in this region.

The Winter Olympic Games in 2014 are stimulating the construction of a new railway branch which is 48 km long and runs parallel to the expressway from the Adler airport to the Red Glade downhill skiing sports complex. About a dozen of the most complicated railway and vehicular tunnels are to be built between 2009 and 2014 to cross this mountainous district. Such a rapid pace in tunneling and construction is unprecedented in the history of Russian tunnel engineering.

Exercises:

Find Russian equivalents to the following English word combinations

Estimated seismic activity, expressway lanes, fabrication method, fan shaped arrangement, fine-dispersed material, fracture zone, multi-cable-stayed system, ring road, rock debris material, Science-Production Association, single tower cable-stayed structure, state-of-art-technology, temperature swings, unobstructed passage.

Answer the following questions

1. What span length is considered to be a record length for the single tower cable-stayed structures in Russia?

2. What technological advance is associated with the Sourgut Bridge construction?

3. Why is the road bridge over the Irtysh River, considered to be a unique structure in the city of Khanty-Mansyisk?

4. How does the new cable-stayed road bridge in St Petersburg differ from the rest bridges over the Neva River?

5. Why does the Silvery Pine Forest Bridge prove to be an engineering achievement and a tourist attraction simultaneously?

6. Which of the two spans (the cable-stayed bridge in Vladivostok or the Akashi Kaikyo suspension structure in Japan) is longer?

7. Why has the Baikal-Amur Trunk Line greatly influenced Russian tunnel engineering?

8. Why are the tunnellers so proud of having constructed the Northern Muya Tunnel?

9. What challengers did they face while tunneling?

10. What newly-developed construction methods did they use?

11. What is the influence of the forthcoming Winter Olympic Games on the Russian transport system?